Consider these recent topline findings on the degree of agreement in “gun households”/households no guns”:
Controls Guns Households Households No Guns
Background checks on all buyers 93 96
Preventing mentally ill from buying guns 89 89
Nationwide bans on sale of guns to people
convicted of violent crimes 88 85
Barring gun purchases by people on no-fly
or watch lists 82 84
Background checks for private sales and
gun shows 77 87
More stringent controls generated less unanimity..
These findings — among with many others – were just reported by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in
How to Reduce Shootings https://nyti.ms/2hL5i2c
(Research by The Pew Research Center and Quinnipiac University).
In an earlier column Kristof presented 10 Modest Steps To Cut Gun Violence .
He concludes his new gun control reporting this way:
“Some of you will protest, as President Trump did, that it’s too soon to talk about guns, or that it is disrespectful to the dead to use such a tragedy to score political points. Yet more Americans have died from gun violence, including suicides, since 1970 (about 1.4 million) than in all the wars in American history going back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.3 million). And it’s not just gang-members: In a typical year, more pre-schoolers are shot dead in America (about 75) than police officers are…
“Yes, making America safer will be hard: There are no perfect solutions. The Second Amendment is one constraint, and so is our polarized political system and the power of the gun lobby. It’s unclear how effective some of my suggestions will be, and in any case this will be a long, uncertain, uphill process.
“So let’s not just shed tears for the dead, give somber speeches and lower flags. Let’s get started and save lives.”